January 2024 Bowl Coring Presentation – Mike Denny

Mike Denny demonstrated both the OneWay Bowl and the McNaughton bowl coring systems on the ZVW club’s 1hp 12 inch lathe.

The OneWay system was used to take a couple of quick cores out of a green bowl blank.

The McNaughton system did not fit the club’s OneWay lathe due to the taller tool rest holder on the banjo so Mike focused on talking us through his approach to making this system work as he prefers.

Mike’s first optimization was to round the nose of the cutter on his McNaughton’s knives to make them less agressive. With the original pointed noses on these knives Mike said they would tend to ‘self feed’ into the wood and catch far too often.

Mike’s next adjustment was to increase the angle of the cutter a bit to get a cleaner cut with less tear-out.

For both systems it is important to have the knives accurately cut along the center line of the bowl. Too high and the cutter will catch, too low and the cutters will not clear shavings and bind.

Mike suggests the use of templates cut to the radius of the knife to help the user visualize the cut as well as set the system to cut to the diameter and depth desired.

Mike uses two templates for each knife with the inner template set to the wall thickness of the finished bowl. Mike locks the knife guide of the McNaughton system into place once set to the right depth and diameter using it to follow the curve of the knife to make the cut.